Well, our grandmother would at least be very happy that everyone's writing letters again.

Dear Sinéad,

I love you. I grew up worshipping your music and your bold attitude and, especially, your refusal to sign up to the bullshit beauty standard. You were one of the few women rockstars that was clearly doing things her own way, and you inspired me to no end. I want to thank you for doing that. I listened to your stunning voice and your true, deep lyrics endlessly on my walkman, flipping the tape again, and again, then again, then again…and I know those ingredients still live and breathe inside me every time I write a song of my own. You shaped me.

I read your letter to Miley Cyrus this morning and I wanted to write back to you. I’m writing this on my cell phone in a plane on the way to Dallas, TX to play a benefit tonight for a group called Girls Rock Dallas…a local group that empowers young girls to become brave musicians. The timing is pretty wonderful and I want to talk to them all tonight about Miley and your letter.

As a musician and a songwriter, I grew up alone, writing in solitude. I don’t know how old you were when you signed your major recording contract, but both of us know that we didn’t go through what Miss Miley here went through – growing up in public and never having the golden opportunity to incubate in her own private world of making-art unseen, thoughts and words with no audience, no big public mirror. You and I had this, more or less, or we at least had it more than Miley. For an artist, that time to incubate is a special kind of gift. We should be really grateful for it. I know I am.

I think you’re right on about so many things, and I also applaud you for posting to your own site with a open letter instead of speaking via rolling stone or any of the other journalists who were calling you to comment. For the most part, they really don’t seem to care very much about the real issues at hand and we’re all just click-bait. What are the real issues…? You and I know it – being a female musician/rockstar/whatever is a pretty fucking impossible and mind-bendingly frustrating job. Our male counterparts are given a way wider playing field than we are. It’s a Chinese finger trap that reflects the basic problems of our women-times: we’re either scolded for looking sexy or we’re scolded for not playing the game. Those who manage to find a perfect balance are rare, and the culture at large seems hellbent on undermining our ability to create that balance peacefully within ourselves. And weirdly, it’s generally women scolding other women…we’re our own worst enemies. Which is not to say there aren’t some mean motherfucking men out there. I faced my fair share of that sort when I was at a major label and told that I was too fat to wear a bra on stage for my Leeds United music video. I stood my ground and got my way, but that was the beginning of the end of my relationship with those dudes. (Funny, the irony here: *I* had to FIGHT my label to be half-naked in a video…)

Here’s where I think you’re off target. Miley is, from what I can gather, in charge of her own show. She’s writing the plot and signing the checks, and although I think it’s tempting to imagine her in the board room of label assholes and management, I don’t think any of them masterminded her current plan to be a raging, naked, twerking sexpot. I think that’s All Miley All The Way. Now, would these men ARGUE with her when she comes into the room and throws down her treatment to hop up naked on the proverbial (and literal) wrecking ball? Of course not. Sex sells. We all know it. Miley knows it better than anyone: swinging naked on a big metal ball simply gets you more hits than swinging on a big metal ball wearing clothes. We’re mammals. LOOK BOOBS! And even more tantalizing: LOOK HANNAH MONTANA BOOBS! But none of this means that Miley is following anyone else’s script. In fact, what I see is Miley desperately trying to write her own script; truly trying to be taken seriously (even if its in a nakedly playful way) by the standards of her own peers.

You and I are no strangers to controversy and we both know how it feels to be screamed at by the public, by the music press, to be misunderstood, reviled, ignored, and used as a punching bag for a larger cultural conversation. It is always my fantasy that we can take these painful experiences and feed them back to the upcoming generation of women rockers in a way that creates a larger playing field instead of a smaller one. I want female musicians to feel like they can do MORE with their mad artistic energy, not LESS. I want women to feel less trapped inside their bodies, less afraid to express themselves, less afraid to be nailed to the cross of the cultural beauty standard. But that necessarily means there needs to be room on the vast playing field for Adele to wear a conservative suit, room for Lady Gaga to do naked performance art in the woods, room for PJ Harvey to wear high-collared 18th century jackets on stage, room for Natasha Kahn to pose boldly naked on the cover of her last record, and room for Miley to rip a page out of stripper culture and run around like a maniac for however long she wants to.

Do I want a whole generation of teenagers looking at Miley Cyrus to determine that the only way to get hits and hawk your music is to rip your clothes off and wiggle around as violently and loudly as possible? (And while we’re at it – while weighing close to nothing and looking perfectly manicured without a single eyelash or molecule of mascara out of place even when a tear rolls down your face?)

Fuck no. But I don’t want to tell them it’s wrong, either, because like I said: the field has to encompass EVERYTHING. There’s no way Miley is going to read your letter and turn around saying “holy shit, they’ve been taking advantage of me this whole time!” She’s been taking advantage of herself, of her youth, her fame and her sexuality…and she knows it. We females all do this, to some extent, and we just want to feel like it’s our hand on the joystick. Telling her that her team is to blame is telling her that she’s not steering her own career and decisions, and I think she’ll just feel patronized.

When I was about 15 (not inconsequentially, right around the time I was listening to your albums non-stop on my long walks to high school every morning), I started having fights with my mother every time I left for school. I’d decided to dress like an oversexed punk and my attire often consisted of sheer lingerie worn over ripped tights and Doc Martens. You remember. This was 1991. My mother would say: “Amanda Palmer, get back in the house and put some real clothes on. You look like a prostitute. I won’t have my daughter walking around town like a harlot.” (I swear to god, my mother actually used the word harlot. Bless.)

I would say: “It’s my life fuck you I didn’t ask to be born etc etc”, grumble back into the house, and throw a flannel dress over my entire ensemble…which I would, of course, remove and stuff back into my bag the minute I got to school.

I know my mother was trying to protect me. She loved me. She didn’t want me to fall into dangerous situations, she didn’t want me to be ridiculed, she didn’t want people to think badly of me. And often they did – the jocks all called me Freak and Lesbo in the halls. But I took it as almost a marker of success – I didn’t want to belong to their club. I took the rolling eyeballs and raised eyebrows of my peers, teachers and parents as a sign that I was on the right track. It was my artist’s uniform, and I was learning how to wear it with pride; I was figuring myself out.

I’m 37 and I’m still trying, and I change my uniform sometimes. Sometimes I play with nudity because it makes people pay attention, sometimes I play with nudity because it makes me loudly vulnerable to those in the room and it turns their brains inside-out as I challenge them to see me for what I am…without clothes.

As much as we may not want to see it this way – because, from a far distant she looks like just another airbrushed hottie from a lite beer commercial – we gotta give Miley (and every female) space to try on her artist’s uniform. It’s like a game of cosmic dress-up, but the stakes are high. If we’re allowed to play it, we’re empowered. If we’re not, we’re still in a cage.

While it may be true that the live-fast-die-young sex-pot female pop stars are washed up and thrown on the “rag heap”, like you say, wouldn’t it be better if we changed the entire plot instead of dealing with it as it’s been handed to us? Keith Richards and Jagger go out there night after night and shake their asses and everyone oohs and aahs that they’ve managed to age and maintain their spot at the sexy table.

Why shouldn’t this be true for women? Who says Miley can’t flip the script anytime she wants?

I want to live in a world where Miley (or any female musician) can twerk wildly at 20, wear a full-cover floral hippie mumu at 37, show up at 47 in see-through latex, and pose semi-naked, like Keith & co, on the cover of rolling stone at 57 and be APPLAUDED for being so comfortable with her body. This is not to say that women have to play the desperate I’M-STILL-SEXY game as they age. Watching Madonna’s plastic surgeries and apparent stubbornness around aging just makes my inner teenager want to scream (YOU’RE MADONNA! YOU COULD HAVE MADE AGING SEXY GODAMMIT AND YOU DIDN’T!!), but the grown-up in me just pauses for a breath and remembers that Madonna is just carving out her section of the playing field. How she chooses to sculpt her face and body is just…her choice. I gotta let her make it and applaud her for being her, even if I’d never make the same choices.

This is a push for more freedom, and in order to make it there, we have to jump massive hurdles and set assumptions. I’ve been following you and the very candid writings on your site about sex and your own sexuality….and I can’t imagine you disagree with me on this point: women need more freedom to say what they want (double entendre there), express what they want (same) and be respected for their bravery, not reprimanded for endangering themselves.

I want to live in a world where the internal dialogue of a woman’s brain has evolved to the point where a female performer can wear a sex-pot outfit and, instead of the all-too-common head-chatter chorus of “UNFAIR! MANIPULATED! WEAK! MANIPULATIVE! EVIL!”, she dons her sexy costume and hears internal voices screaming “FAIR! POWERFUL! PLAYFUL! BRAVE! SEXY!” You know…you go girl. But not “you go girl and be manipulated by the man, or manipulate the men in your wake”. just…”you go girl and wear whatever the fuck you want. And play smart.”

I want to live in a world where WE as women determine what we wear and look like and play the game as our fancy leads us, army pants one minute and killer gown the next, where WE decide whether or not we’re going to play games with the male gaze and the starry-eyed hard-ons that can make men so easy to manipulate. But seriously, let’s all play the game together, with a wink and a nudge…so we don’t hurt each other. If men and women don’t have a constantly open dialogue about how we do and don’t (or should and shouldn’t) manipulate and play with each other, we all lose. We are all fragile humans with little time on this beautiful, sexually-charged, ecstatic planet. Let’s share it to the fullest extent that we can and make the playing field for all of us the size of the whole earth.

In other words, let’s give our young women the right weapons to fight with as they charge naked into battle, instead of ordering them to get back in the house and put some goddamn clothes on.

With immense respect,

Amanda Palmer

P.S. I love you and your music so much, Sinéad, and a bunch of people on my Twitter feed send their love as well. Thank you for writing this letter and giving me the the chance to crank my brain open, and I hope I get to meet you in person someday so I can weep and thank you for everything you’ve done for me and for so many others.

P.P.S. For any of y’all curious to check out those wonderful Sinéad albums that provided my teenage soundtrack, the two big ones were “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” and ”The Lion and the Cobra”. I’ll leave it up to Sinéad to let you know whether to buy them on iTunes or just go torrent them. I don’t know how her relationship with Ensign/Chrysalis is…chances are those labels don’t even exist anymore. :)

To add to my other post, if Sinead O'Connor had stuck to making these points she made here: http://www.rte.ie/player/gb/show/10205178/ in this interview the other night, instead of the open letters - this would have been much better.

With the lengthy arse kissing left out, it's ok. She gets across a few good points.

I don't understand why people instantly think what Sinead O'Connor wrote in these letters would be too deep and thought provoking for MC [I've seen some of S O'C's typing on twitter, and unfortunately I was really far from impressed by it - and I don't mean the example MC wrongly posted, but the rest of it that I saw].

The 'letters' were nothing special, S O'C most likely didn't think they should be seen as such either - but many people seemed wowed by them purely because they think in this instance S O'C is the respectable party. This sort of thing is social observation to me - I don't get people, so when this sort of thing happens and is up for observation, I get curious about peoples reactions.

[I don't dislike either at all by the way - because I don't know them]

So many people accolade the 'letters' as being some sort of good feminism, which in turn probably makes those accoladers feel a bit elevated, because they are supporting the more ’intellectual' and experienced point of view - Yet I think to show solidarity, and support amongst women - then the way the entire internet enjoyed / continues to enjoy ridiculing MC [/ various other women in general] in a huge way would be a better thing to address, more so than MC's current behaviour / act it's self.

'Speaking' of MC's act, it seems alot of people think she should stop it because she didn't look right while trying to pull something like this off - I guess she should be sorry, and feel more ashamed of herself that she isn't the right level of sexy to be acceptable in the way she currently chooses to do what she wants. I only saw part of the awards act, and to me it looked like she was mostly messing around anyway / not really attempting to be seen as some conventional sizzling hot bitch.

Miley cyrus was wrong for doing one thing, and that was, out of the three or four messages only that she put out there on the entire subject [credit to her], she should not have posted the past twitter messages by S O'C, from when she was asking for help - but then S O'C really used it to her advantage to try to get all who relate to mental health issues on side. There are plenty of mental health sufferers, as well as neurotypically different people who will still think S O'C's approach to all of this was wrong, even after MC posted that. S O'C was wrong to think she was now speaking on behalf of all who have gone through mental health issues, or sexual abuse. Also asking for an apology to Amanda Bynes was just silly, when [by the same logic] that person herself seems to have quite a few people to apologise to herself [I did a quick internet search on her].

I do not think that S O'C was right in 'saying' that, by MC posting the photo of S O'C ripping up a photo of the then pope, that she also offended all those who have been victim of sexual abuse . I took it more as, this was Sinead's moment of controversy - this is apparently mine, some of us have them, whatever.

I'm sure S O'C gained alot of new respect from those who deal with mental health issues, sexual abuse survivours, and others who show awareness - all while over looking that amongst those messages of support, there is a whole lot of terrible things said about 'whores', 'sluts', Miley Cyrus's body shape, looks, and worth...and a whole lot of other expressions used to keep a woman in her place, when she is seen as not being good enough. This, along with pitting Sinead O’Connor against Miley Cyrus, one type of woman against another...including the nasty comments about Sinead herself...All of this was supposed to be helpful to MC? [as far as S O'C was concerned] or, as far as many others were concerned, also supportive of feminism? - I don't see how.

Personally I just don't get the focus on what MC is doing - negative, or positive, and I don't understand why she isn't just left to get on with it.

I think Amanda misses the whole point of what Sinead was saying to Miley.

Don't compare yourself to me, we're NOT the same, and stop making fun of mentally ill people.
If Palmer had really read the letters she would have thanked Sinead for sticking up for her, when Miley outrightly put Amanda down too.

Amanda is clever in the fact that she knows that people need the room, mentally and physically to be themselves to their fullest extent and be applauded for even the tiniest bit of effort.

But she's so deeply embroiled in that, that she misses the whole mental health issue, which is what Miley was talking about in the first place.
She should really address how the media and the people around Miley think that it is okay for someone (as big as she is right now) to do those things, get away with it, and still be ask to host events.
As a role model for a person, I was wrong, Miley is probably a decent role model for people with confidence issues. It's just that no all people, regardless of gender, need to use sex to sell. They have other talents, which is also what Sinead was referencing. That Miley has obvious talent, and she shouldn't have to be naked and poking fun at people just to get attention, she should do it according to the reasons she got into the business, her talent.

I do understand all that's went on, and I believe as she was and is a hardcore fan that Amanda was trying to back Sinead. But in being a fan, she sold herself to the fancraze that they only stick to the points of the situation that occurred and the interesting points. Like when Sinead gets angry and it's not about Miley poking fun, because she went further. So Sinead though that, instead of Miley trying to hurt Sinead and her career, that Sinead would go for Miley's career too.

This was NOT the point of those letters.

Poking fun at mental illness and also saying that Sinead was presently in that metal state by posting capped tweets and a picture of Sinead ripping the Pope's photo, that was the point.

That needs dealt with, not how people are better because they aren't conforming to society. Its almost like, poking fun at mental illness isn't conforming to society and Amanda thinks that it;s okay.

You have got to be out of your mind... You obviously don't know anything about Dresden Dolls... this is why I give up on people... because they don't do the research and appreciate art from other viewpoints... Lord... you guys are about as bad as the people wondering who Sinead is in the first place... and that is near about damn ridiculous...

Obviously, Instinct view this letter as something more than a self serving piece designed to get attention, it is not. Whoever the author thinks she is, she has never been in the position of either Ms. Cyrus or Ms. o'connor.

Ms. Palmer seems to be trying to present herself as some sort of expert and goes on some strange disjointed diatribe about women being trapped in their bodies, while simultaneously suggesting that Ms. cyrus should be able to do what she wishes with her own body.

that is true, however, it is difficult to claim that Miley isn't getting so e really bad advice, and if she is doing this all on her own, she needs to get some good people on her side. The simple fact is that what she is attempting has already been done, and much better, by other performers. The performance on the awards was bad, plain and simple. The idiotic tongue thing is repulsive and has nothing to do with her being female, it would be even more repulsive on a male performer, and she shows no sign of being able to keep her tongue in her mouth,

obviously the performance was hyper sexualized, but she simply doesn't have the talent or stage presence of a Madonna, Beyoncé, or even a Britney Spears, she is making herself a laughingstock, a national joke, and encouraging that isn't helpful.